Streetlights
by thegreatfool
Summary: Any way you looked at it streetlights were truly useless things.


Disclamer: Naruto is the work Masashi Kishimoto. It is not mine. This is merely a fanfiction and as such it is not to be used for profit or gain of any kind. Let me repeat: It is not mine. Do not sue.

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This was enough. He understood that shinobi were bred for their loyalty and their thoughtless self-sacrifice for the good of their masters, but this was hardly part of his job description. Not only had the Hokage-sama put the demon brat in his class, but now he was being woken up at two in the morning to go find out why, despite never attending class for more than two days in a row, Naruto damn Uzumaki was breaking into the ninja academy. 

Honestly they should just lock the demon up and be done with it. That or just kill the monster, he certainly deserved that much at the very least. Iruka had already lost his parents to those claws, why should the fact that they were now hidden as the hands of a child strip him of the justice he deserved. A demon was a demon, that was all, and yet despite all that he suddenly found himself to be Naruto's newest caretaker. If it wasn't for the Hokage-sama he would have seen the boy expelled from this academy long ago. What was the point of teaching a monster to be more deadly anyway?

Walking through the dimly lit classrooms, brightened only by the pale glow of those infernal streetlights that lurked just beyond the confines of the building, Iruka could not help but wonder why they even bothered putting in the damn things at all. All they did was cast enough light to show the world what they truly had to be afraid of; it would take true radiance to cast away those fearful specters which gave so many of his students inconsolable nightmares. That half-assed glow did nothing more than heighten the shadows that plagued men's souls. Streetlights were useless indeed, a pale substitute at best and nothing more than a pathetic sham at worse.

Then, like that ever waiting moth to a flame who, at the moment when the fires seemed to rage highest, barreled himself into its searing embrace, a fearful noise assaulted the weary teacher through the beaconing halls. It sounded like weeping, but then again it just couldn't be. Iruka had never met a man who could make such a sound. A despairing wail it was, as if the speaker's own heart was sobbing madly through their chest with a gloom too vast to be confined in one mere vessel and as such pouring onto the senses of every attentive ear around. If that was Naruto hurting one of his students…Iruka could already feel his pace quicken as the tiled floor began to seamlessly blend into onto one smooth unending blur beneath his racing step. The boy was dead. Hokage-sama's orders or not, he was dead.

Naruto had only been in his charge for a single year and already he was throwing the life Iruka had so carefully constructed from the ashes back into ruin. It didn't help his patience much when he remembered that the boy was the one who had originally charred his existence to such a state in the first place. To think he had been happy once. A normal family, a normal childhood, everything perfectly normal. Now, he wasn't even sure what normal was. He could barely even remembered the faces of his parents anymore and honestly at this point he wasn't sure if that was a bad thing; it hurt less that way.

Not that any of that really mattered anymore. The past was the past; the future was what was his to claim except the way things were looking the prospects in that area didn't seem too bright. Unless something changed drastically Naruto would be in his care for a long time to come. His performance at yesterday's graduation exam had been, as Iruka expected, a horrific failure. Naruto probably didn't even care. Where your normal child would have looked heartbroken at such a set-back to their life's dream all he had done was smile and say that he would be just that much better next year. The brat didn't understand the meaning of the word grief. How could a monster?

The wailing was louder now and if it was possible, worse than Iruka could have imagined. Standing just outside the door that maddening noise was so potent that Iruka felt as though someone were plunging something very cold deep, deep inside him. It was truly ice for the soul and though such a description could hardly do the feeling justice, it was the best he had. Such a thing was almost inherently beyond the power of mere words to express.

Closing his hand on the door knob it was not without a sense of trepidation that Iruka placed his key in the keyhole and with careful ears listened for the quick coming click of the lock unbolting. It was as he had expected, Naruto had come in through the window.

Half expecting to find Naruto standing over some battered corpse still giving off that ever continuous moan of pain in its dying breath, Iruka slid open the wooden barrier and entered the room. It was very dark, unlit even by the light of the street lamps except in one small corner beneath the window where, as Iruka expected, Naruto lay huddled, his back to the wall with startled eyes gazing up at his teacher. Casting a dreary glow around the boy, the shadowy light spilled forth from the window on the wall behind him erecting an almost offensive sham of a halo around his prone form. Everything else was black.

There was no one else there. Those wails which had been causing the young chunin so much grief had been spread from none other than that very same individual he had been so sure had been causing them.

Another sob racking his scrunched up body, Naruto backed himself against the wall trying all the while to hide his tear-streaked face from view.

"W…what d…do you want sensei."

Taken aback slightly Iruka approached the demon until he was standing barely an arm's length away from its heaving form, his anger gone oddly enough. "What are you doing here Naruto-kun?"

"Tal…talking to someone. I'm sorry, but…but they're mad at me again. The…they're always mad." Another sob and another dry wretch.

"Who's mad at you Naruto-kun? No one's here."

"They are." Raising a limp hand at Iruka's chest Naruto stuck out his finger to point at him.

"Naruto-kun who said I was mad at you?"

"Not you. Them." More forcefully now, Naruto began gesturing wildly at Iruka's chest.

"Who Naruto-kun?"

"THEM!!! JUST LOOK!!!"

Turning around it struck Iruka at last. It hadn't been him Naruto had been pointing at, it had been the wall. Or more specifically what was on the wall. At the beginning of the semester, Iruka had placed a large poster of the Third and Fourth Hokages on the wall behind him, right to the left of his desk. It had been one of the few days he had ever seen Naruto actually pay attention come to think of it.

"They've tried so hard for me. Th…they did so much and look what they got for it!!! N…nothing more than a failure, a worthless stupid failure. He died to save me, to save this village and I…I can't even pull off a stupid clone jutsu. He protected us all from the Nine Tails and the Third… The Third gave me this spot in the academy s…so that I could be a ninja. So that I could be something."

"Look at me. What good have I done to deserve that? I j…just want to make them proud. They'll be so mad. Now wonder I don't ha…have anything. I don't deserve it." He was sobbing harder at this point, his chest heaving to the point where Iruka thought it would break.

"I just wanted to make them proud." It was barely a whisper but Iruka heard it all the same.

He should leave now. They boy obviously wasn't going to cause any more trouble in his current state. It wasn't his job to comfort the demon fox who killed his parents. The demon fox who didn't even yet understand the evil piece of scum he really was. The demon fox who was currently sobbing on the floor, grasping the board beneath his palms as if desperate to grab hold of something, anything.

"Do you know why they hate you Naruto? Why this village despises you?" His voice was barely a whisper now.

"I don't care. I just want to be Hokage; I just want to make them proud. I don't want to be like this anymore. I do…I don't want to be nothing."

"You're a fool Naruto."

"But…" He never did get to finish his sentence. In the time it had taken to get that first word out of his tear ridden throat Iruka had dropped down to one knee and done something he had promised himself he would never do. He had swept up that boy into a hug.

"Why are you…?"

Standing up Iruka pulled Naruto to his feet with a degree of gentleness that as of yet was quite alien to the young boy. "Come on Naruto I've half-assed my duty to you for far too long. Let's get out of here."

"But…"

Ignoring him Iruka seized his hand and led him out of the classroom. "You must be hungry. There's a pretty good ramen place a few blocks down. Great food, good prices, and best of all kid not a streetlight in sight."

Looking down at him Iruka whispered something that he was never truly sure that the boy ever heard, "It's time to show you what light really is Naruto-kun." Funny the things that can change a man.


End file.
